My Great Grandfather. Billy was just 17 upon enlistment. The tale told to me by my father was that he was totally blind, having been blinded in one eye in a slingshot fight as a boy and losing the other to powder burns from the war. Through all the battles he took part in, he was never wounded. Somewhere near Mobile, possibly at Blakely, he was captured. He was given a choice of joining the Union Navy or certain death in a Northern prison camp. Obviously choosing the latter, he mustered out of the Navy in 1865 suffering from advancing blindness. My father said Billy told his family that fighting for slavery was the worst mistake he ever made.